


Détente

by arboreal_overlords



Series: this is a cold war [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: F/F, Gen, Jail for Nureyev Jail for a THOUSAND YEARS, Other, SPOILERS FOR MEGA ULTRABOTS PART 2, Vespa and Juno at long last become friends, just kidding I love him but jail for five minutes, rated T for language and one mention of sex, the girls are NOT fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24865153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arboreal_overlords/pseuds/arboreal_overlords
Summary: It was a marker of exactly how bad Juno looked that, when Vespa arrived, she offered him a cookie and didn’t say anything resembling ‘I told you so.’“Jet made them,” she said instead.  “Figured if they’re no good, we could use them as projectiles.”“What,” Juno said.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa, Juno Steel & Vespa (Penumbra Podcast), Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: this is a cold war [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860574
Comments: 82
Kudos: 274





	Détente

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a written version of that ATLA meme where Juno would say “the love of my life betrayed me” and Vespa says “that’s rough, buddy” while hiding a huge sign with balloons taped to it that reads ‘I WAS RIGHT’ behind her back.  
> Somehow it became over 3k because I love Juno and Vespa’s potential friendship.
> 
> Content warnings for: Juno being generally out of it for a bunch of this fic, including moments where he’s clearly spiraling and/or disassociating Canon-typical Vespa aggression and trauma, and a brief moment of violence against Peter.

It was a marker of exactly how bad Juno looked that, when Vespa arrived, she offered him a cookie and didn’t say anything resembling _‘I told you so.’_

“Jet made them,” she said instead.“Figured if they’re no good, we could use them as projectiles.”

“What,” Juno said.

When it came to the list of people Juno expected to be walking into his room, Vespa was last. Then again, Juno never expected to be double-crossed by the love of his life either, so today was really racking up some points in Narrative Twist Bingo.

Rita had been in and out all afternoon, a tiny cyclone of anger and concern. She kept on stacking pillows against Juno like he was a building in need of scaffolding, all while muttering about pits full of crocodiles and other punishments that she had seen in the streams. Juno assumed that when Rita left she was busy hiding every bottle of alcohol aboard the Carte Blanche, which was probably a good idea.Juno had dealt with bad breakups in the past by downing a glass of whiskey or twelve and drunk-comming his exes or anyone else who would listen. That wasn’t really an option anymore, especially since his ex was imprisoned down the hall and Juno was wanted by several interplanetary organizations. Sober contemplation it was. He groaned into one of Rita’s decorative pillows.

Vespa, for some reason, was still in the room, staring at Juno intently and holding a plate of cookies like a weapon. They looked like they were maybe chocolate chip, and were burnt at the edges.

“So what is this,” Juno finally snapped. “An interrogation?”

“No, it’s a cookie,” Vespa said, throwing the baked good onto Juno’s bedspread, where it bounced slightly and left a halo of crumbs. “Leave the hallucinating to me, Steel.”

* * *

It was _Khan_ of all people who had tipped them off. At some point that was probably many, many, many years from now, Juno was going to appreciate the irony of the unstoppable thief Peter Nureyev being foiled by the only honest man on Mars.

After they had used Rita’s pilfered copy of the Book to help repair the damage to the Carte Blanche, Juno had begged Buddy into letting him call Captain Khan, who Juno had tasked with keeping an eye on Mick.

“Darling,” she sighed, “I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you my concerns about contacting law enforcement when we’re currently being hunted by Dark Matters.” 

“Rita can make the call untraceable,” Juno argued confidently, looking over at Rita when Buddy’s back was turned to confirm that this was actually possible. “Khan doesn’t care about where we are."

Buddy finally relented, through Vespa demanded that Juno keep the call on public speaker so that they could all hear it. “Just in case you’re hiding anything, Steel,” she sneered, which Juno ignored.

So, they were all assembled in the kitchen when Juno made the call, either out of curiosity, vigilance, or boredom. Rita was fiddling with a contraption she had attached to her comms, a tangle of wires and metal that she explained in enthusiastic detail to mostly unlistening ears until the call went through.

“Steel?” Khan barked over the phone. “Is that you? Where the hell are you calling me from, this phone number looks like someone threw spaghetti at a wall.”

June grinned, surprised at the extent to which he’d missed the brusque policeman. “Hi Captain,” he said. “I assume Hyperion City is still standing.”

“No thanks to you,” Khan blustered. “Your idiot friend Mercury is trying his best to turn the sewer rabbits into an organized crime unit.”

Juno laughed. “Wait, seriously?”

They talked for a while, mostly Juno goading Khan into indignant monologues through quips and impertinent questions. Nureyev perched behind him, nakedly fascinated in the exchange. Juno realized, distantly, that Nureyev had never seen him interact with someone from Hyperion besides Rita. He briefly considered Nureyev and Mick in the same room and then had to immediately turn away from the panic and laughter that the situation provoked.

“By the way, Steel, we arrested someone near Old Town who was sniffing around for you,” Khan finally said. “Fellow by the name of Picarelli. Wanted for some murders tied to the Bareda Corporation.”

Juno felt Nureyev tense behind him and assumed that he was worried about having the Bareda Corp as potential enemies. “The Venusian Mafia? Even I was never reckless enough to mess with them.”

Rita made a judgmental humming noise in the background.

“Fine,” Juno said tetchily, “Maybe at one point I might have gotten tangled with the prime minister of Venus, but it was all Vales Vicky’s fault. Besides, the prime mister didn’t seem like the kind of fella to hold a grudge.Sorry Khan, Picarelli must have mixed up his lady P.I.’s.”

Khan grunted. “Maybe. He was going on about debts and someone selling him some book and a knife? Anyway, I think the idea was that you were supposed to serve as collateral, so it’s probably for the best that you’re a space pirate now.”

“Oh come on, I’m not a _space pirate_ ,” Juno complained. “You need to stop listening to Mick. Wait, what was that about a book and a knife?”

“Hard to say,”Khan said. “It seemed like a pretty specific book, he wasn’t just in the market for any of them. Anyway, his contact is some guy named Peter Nureyev. You ever heard of him? I ‘ve got Loo trying to look him up now, but you could save us all a few hours if Rita is there with you doing all of your work for you as usual.”

Juno froze, Rita gasped loudly, and the other three hardened criminals in the room were smart enough to put two and two together immediately turning their gaze to Ransom, who was rooted to the spot and pale as a ghost.

“I guess not,” Khan said, barreling through the shocked silence that he mistook as a denial.“Well, Steel, let me know if you ever stop bobbing around space like a criminal pool floaty. My wife wants you to come over for dinner, which will certainly make organizing your arrest easier.” He ended the call with an audible click.

For a minute, the kitchen of the Carte Blanche was completely silent. Then, Nureyev shifted minutely back on his cast— the smallest whisper on hard tile— and three guns appeared suddenly out of the domestic idyll of the group meeting. Buddy, Vespa, and Jet all leveled their weapons at the thief, their expressions ranging from quiet disappointment to feral rage.

Juno hadn’t drawn his blaster, because his brain was still stuck on Khan casually saying the name _Nureyev_ like it was nothing, like it was a common name he could throw around without consequence. “Wait,” he managed to say uneasily, throwing up his hand. “This is . . . . this is some kind of mistake.”

“That seems unlikely,” Jet said firmly.

Nureyev was still standing directly in front of him; they were only separated by the chair that Juno had abruptly stood from. Juno could see Nureyev memorize and understand the layout of the room. He was within arm's length of Juno and Rita, could grab one of them to use as a hostage and possibly leverage an escape route to the Ruby 7. The part of Juno that was already spiraling welcomed it; Nureyev holding a gun to his head would at least be an answer, a final confirmation that he had never forgiven him for that hotel room in Hyperion City.

Instead, Nureyev stepped slowly backward, away from Juno, holding his hands up in careful surrender. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid that it’s not a mistake.”

Juno fully checked out of the resulting conversation for a few seconds. People were shouting and he couldn’t think, couldn’t move out of a vortex of pain and confusion and a small voice that cried in elation that _of course_ this was happening, _of course_ Nureyev never really forgave him, that no matter how much Juno tried to change, he would still inevitably end in disaster.

It was Rita’s hand in his that checked him back into the room. She was squeezing it almost painfully tightly and ignoring the clamor in the rest of the room to peer up at him. Juno blinked a few times and squeezed her hand back, before turning his attention to the conversation at hand.

“I think,” Buddy said frostily, “we deserve a little more of an explanation, Pete."

Nureyev shifted on his feet, his face looking somehow paler and more drawn. “I’m dying,” he said quietly. It looked like the confession required physical effort.

Vespa laughed harshly, drawing a wicked-looking knife out of nowhere with her free hand. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

Nureyev sighed and had the temerity to look _annoyed_. “Yes, yes, I get that I’m currently in grave mortal peril, but I meant in a . . . more medical sense.”

“That’s impossible,” Vespa snapped. “I checked you, I check everyone who came onto the Carte Blanche. I would have noticed it.”

“I took great pains to ensure that you didn’t,” Nureyev said bitterly. “At first because I was worried that it would ruin my chances of being accepted onto the crew, and then because we were planning on stealing the Curemother Prime.”

“They’re medical debts, then,” Buddy said, her gun still trained on Peter’s head with one casual hand. 

Nureyev’s shoulders sagged slightly under the weight of Buddy’s gaze. “Yes, they are. One last gift from the Guardian Angel lasers; a new breed of radiation sickness. Medical experts say that it’s incurable, and I spent quite a bit of money in the last year trying to prove them wrong. The people I borrowed that money from are not the type to take missed payments lightly.”

“So you offered the objects to counter your debt,” Jet said solemnly. 

“I wasn’t sabotaging our mission” Nureyev insisted. “I was going to give them the objects _after_ we stole the Curemother. They’d be worthless to you, at that point.”

“That wasn’t your call to make,” Buddy said, her tone calm and sad despite the gun in her hand. “I gave you the option to tell me about your debts, Pete. We would have given you the objects after the heist.”

Nureyev gave a thin, tight smile. “I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to bet my life on the charity of those who already found me suspicious.”

“So instead you chose to confirm those suspicions,” Buddy replied. “That’s disappointing.”

It was a devastating retort that Nureyev clearly felt deeply, because he straightened and suddenly looked fierce instead of chastened, hiding his shame under anger.

“Can we kill him, Buddy?” Vespa asked.

Buddy sighed and lowered her blaster, trusting that Vespa and Jet had Nureyev more than covered. “No, Vespa. Among other things, Juno did have the decency not to shoot you after you attacked him back on the Outer Rim, and it would be unjust to find myself in the same situation and do the opposite.”

Vespa seemed to accept the logic of this statement, even if she wasn’t particularly happy with it. But Buddy’s words had also turned everyone’s attention back to Juno, who was still standing in silent shock.

Nureyev’s defensive anger evaporated. “Juno,” he said softly. “Juno, I— “

“— do you have a heart condition?” Juno asked hoarsely, cutting Nureyev off before he could say his name like that again.

Nureyev looked confused. “What?”

“You said you were sick,” Juno continued, his voice marginally stronger. “Do you have a heart condition?”

“. . . . .No,” Nureyev replied uncertainly. “It’s located in my kidneys.”

“Okay,” Juno said, and stunned him.

Even without the Theia eye, Juno was a quick enough draw that Buddy, Vespa, and Jet did little more than flinch before Nureyev hit the ground, his new cast making a hollow thud on the tile.

Juno pocketed his gun, determinedly not looking at anyone else in the room. After a few minutes, during which Buddy and Jet had a silent conversation with their eyes, Jet scooped up Nureyev easily and carried him down to the hallway to the brig.

“I didn’t know,” Juno said quietly.

“I know, Juno” Buddy said. “I did.”

As it turns out, even without Jet, Vespa and Rita were perfectly capable of shouting Buddy down loudly enough for Juno to dip out of focus again. He sat numbly down into the chair where he had just laughed over Mick adopting sewer rabbits. It was four minutes ago.

In another four minutes, Juno was going to stand up and get some answers from Buddy. He was going to discuss their options, and he was going to grab his pajamas from Nureyev’s room and burrow under the covers of his bed. Four minutes.

* * *

Several hours later, Vespa paced outside Juno’s room with a plate of truly awful cookies Jet had stress-baked, immersed in a silent, tense argument with herself.

The thing was, she was _right._ After tensely waiting for the other shoe to drop for weeks, questioning every shadow that crossed her line of sight, Vespa should be feeling better about all of this. It’s technically the best-case scenario; the thief got caught without compromising any of their mission or endangering Buddy, and they only lost one member of the crew, making their heist of the Curemother still salvageable. In almost all of the scenarios that Vespa had imagined, Ransom and Steel had conspired together. Maybe even the small hyperactive one had been in on it.

But that was the other thing; even when running around on the Carte Blanche at three in the morning and seriously doubting her sanity, Vespa had known that Ransom would have pulled Juno into his scheme, wouldn’t skip off without him. Ransom’s puppy eyes and soppy endearments meant nothing, nor did the genuinely _offensively loud_ fucking, but the thief also angled himself in front of Juno every time she was in the room. Vespa knew hyperawareness like an old friend, and Ransom never lost sight of where she was in relation to Juno, never drifted far enough away that he couldn’t be there in three seconds with a knife. In the rare moments— usually medical disasters— when Vespa had seen Juno with his shirt off, she’d noticed a pink scar running across his lower abdomen, a neat slash that had been a touch too shallow to kill. She’d noticed the way that Ransom looked at that scar, too. Vespa doubted Ransom’s name, his word, his loyalty, and his skill, but this seemed to be the one thing she could count on. Juno probably thought so too.

Thus, the cookies.

Minutes into this process, Juno was still struggling to comprehend that Vespa wasn’t there to interrogate him or rub Ransom’s betrayal in his face. “You can just say it,” he spat. “We both know that you want to.”

Vespa shrugged. “I’m right. Doesn’t mean that I need to be happy about it.”

Juno was clearly prepared to suffer through some sort of cruel victory lap, and looked taken aback that Vespa wasn’t taking the bait. Instead, they sat in silence for a while. It was one of the few things (maybe the only thing) that Vespa had genuinely liked about Juno from the outset; he never felt the need to fill the silence. She tried one of Jet’s cookies and grimaced at the charred aftertaste.

“How is he?” Juno finally asked.

“Sick,” Vespa said. “Dunno how he kept it from me for so long.”

Juno snorted. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. At least you weren’t literally sleeping with him.”

Vespa ordinarily would have retorted that Juno and Ransom didn’t seem to spend any of their time together actually _sleeping_ , but she bit it back. Kicking a lady while he was down was an excellent offensive tactic, but not required here. “He wanted to see you,” she said instead. Ransom had asked for little else between silent periods of sulking that he probably thought was tragic stoicism or some shit.

“He did?” Juno asked and visibly winced at the sudden eagerness in his voice.

Vespa nodded. “Yeah. I told him that I asked Buddy for his intestines as a wedding present, and so apparently no one was getting what they wanted tonight.”

Juno sighed and went back to staring blankly at the far wall. As soothing as Juno’s silences usually were, he might actually be in medical shock. She probably should have checked for that.

Vespa knew that, for all her skills as a doctor, she wasn’t particularly known for her bedside manner. It never really bothered her; in the years she practiced medicine before the Board of Fresh Starts, no one who needed her medical attention was particularly concerned with her interpersonal skills. Most of them were bleeding out in the middle of firefight. She had Buddy for that, to ease the way between people and charm them away from Vespa’s sharp edges. She had been starting to think that the thief did something similar for Juno; that perhaps his oily charm served as a smokescreen from anyone who might poke too hard at Juno’s vulnerabilities. Then again, life had taught Vespa that paranoia paid infrequently but richly.

“Hey Vespa,” Juno said, and by the look on his face Vespa was surprised that Juno still remembered she was in the room.

“Yeah, Steel?”

“Can I ask a favor?”

Vespa wondered if this was going to be a medical favor or an assassin favor. If Juno asked her to take out Ransom, Buddy would be furious, but she might still do it. If Juno asked her for drugs, she would say no. That pretty much covered all possible options.

Juno cleared his throat and pushed on without her answer. “I don’t have a great track record with relationships,” he said tersely. “If I . .say what I’m thinking about, will you tell me if I’m acting crazy?”

_You’re not crazy_ , was Vespa’s gut reaction. Juno had always been careful, no matter what, to never level her own hallucinations against her. That was always the key difference between the version of Juno that jeered at her in her head and the one who existed in the real world.

“Why me?” She asked.

“You won’t try and be nice to me,” Juno said frankly. “I mean, you’ve literally never tried to be nice to me.”

“I’m not breaking your ankles, Steel,” Vespa snapped. “That’s my version of nice.”

“Yeah, see, that’s perfect,” Juno replied, waving at her. “Stay right there, maybe tone down the death threats by about twenty percent.”

Vespa snorted.

Juno hesitated before moving forward. “I want to give him the Curemother,” he said finally. “I’m not saying let’s release him from lockup and pretend we’re a happy family, but kicking him out is as good as a death sentence.”

Vespa shrugged. “Ransom signed his own death warrant one way or another. Even if we don’t kill him, we’re sure as hell not responsible for saving him. He made his choice.”

“Yeah, but— “ Juno stopped himself. “I think debts like that can make you do things that you wouldn’t. It just hangs over you like a damn raincloud— “

He went on like that for a few minutes, but Vespa had stopped listening after she got the initial gist of his speech. Juno was right, even if his insistence on pushing the raincloud metaphor was annoying. Vespa could still feel the weight of the collar from the Board of Fresh Starts around her throat. For years, she would startle in the middle of whatever sleep she managed to catch, convinced that it was tightening around her neck like a python.

“Personal experience, Steel?” She asked, once Juno had petered off into silence.

Juno winced. “None of my debts were ever financial.”

Vespa sighed and ran through all of her whispered fights with Buddy over Juno, her own repeated insistence that the kid was an employee and _not your actual son, Bud._ Vespa should give Juno a sharp talk about vigilance and the importance of preparing for the one in a thousand chance. Given the circumstances, he might actually listen to her for once.

“I had a contingency plan for every member of the crew,” she said instead. “In case I needed to take any of you out.”

“O . . . . . kay?”

“That’s what I thought about when the Dark Matters drone attacked us,” Vespa continued haltingly. “I had a plan for every member of the crew except Buddy.”

Juno stilled. “Oh,” he said softly.

Vespa could say something meaningful about love and vulnerability and letting yourself be weak, but she wasn't a fucking Sunday school teacher, and Juno is prosey enough to make the jump on his own.

“What was you plan for me, anyway?” Juno asked, providing an out of this line of discussion for both of them.

“None of your business,” Vespa snapped. “I might still need it.” She wouldn’t.

Juno give a quiet little chuckle. “Yeah, fine.”

They sat quietly for a while again, but Juno seemed a little better; his thousand-yard stare was gone, at least.

Finally, Vespa growled and rubbed her eyes. “He stays in the brig,” she capitulated. “I’m not giving him any special treatment, either.”

Juno was going to get a crick in his neck from nodding it so hard. “Yep. I swear.”

“And what about the Bareda Corp?” Vespa asked, veering back towards sharpness out of discomfort more than actual anger. “We can’t have Venusian Mafia breathing down our necks while we’re trying to steal the Curemother.”

Juno grinned. He had a beautiful smile, which Vespa blamed for a solid forty percent of Buddy’s softness towards him. Usually, that smile made Vespa want to kick his smug teeth in, but she was feeling more lenient right now.

“The Bareda Corp doesn’t know that Ransom is with us,” he said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be looking for me on Mars. The two of us could take a little field trip and catch them by surprise.”

Vespa cocked her head. “What’s in it for me?”

“Stabbing people,” Juno said frankly.“And Buddy will be happy that we’re, y’know, trying out the buddy system! But mostly just a lot of stabbing.”

It would feel nice to disembowel a few mafia members, especially if they were enforcing medical debt now. But Vespa was bowing out of organized crime for a reason.”I can’t rely on my eyes,” she said stiffly. A threat was hovering on the tip of her tongue, easy and automatic.

But Juno just shrugged. “So check in with me,” he said. “I’ve got a few blind spots I need covered too. We can double-check all of our calls.”

It was the nicest thing that Juno had ever done for her: phrasing her hallucinations as just one part of a shared weakness. “This doesn’t make us friends, Steel,” Vespa warned gruffly. “We’re not going to hold hands and braid daisy chains now. It’s just a mission.”

Juno held up his hands in capitulation. “Wasn’t going to suggest it. Anyway, daisies do nothing for my complexion.”

* * *

Buddy was delighted and trying very hard not to show it. “What a novelty to be informed of my crew’s plans in advance,” she said drily. “I agree that the element of surprise is a wonderful idea. Make sure to stay connected to Rita. Vespa . . .?”

This was Buddy’s way of checking in on Vespa’s hallucinations without referencing them in front of the crew. Vespa cleared her throat. “Steel is going to double-check my visuals,” she said gruffly.

Buddy nodded. “That seems like a good compromise for you both.” She was going to be _insufferably_ smug later, Vespa thought fondly.

Jet had graciously loaned them the Ruby 7, on the condition that Juno drove. Vespa, who could put hallucinations and high-speed driving together to equal horrible death, didn’t offer a single protest.

“Okay,” Juno said, a little shrill with nerves he clapped one hand on the wheel of the car and listened to its welcoming whistle. “Let’s hope this is pretty much the same process with one eye.”

Vespa leaned back in the passenger seat and thought wistfully about the fucking _hissy fit_ Ransom was going to throw when he learned that Juno was off on a mission alone with her to carve up some Venusian mobsters. Maybe she could convince Rita to tape it.

Vespa smiled. It was really the little things in life.

**Author's Note:**

> LMK if you want a sequel to this where the rest of the crew just annoy Nureyev to death while he's in the brig and then also eventually forgive him. Come shout with me in the comments or on Tumblr @ arborealoverlords about Juno and Vespa's friendship.


End file.
